Officials take sales tax hike to the people

STOCKTON - With fewer than two months to go before the Nov. 5 election, city officials today kicked off a push to rally support for a 3/4-cent sales tax increase.

Scott Smith

STOCKTON - With fewer than two months to go before the Nov. 5 election, city officials today kicked off a push to rally support for a 3/4-cent sales tax increase.

Councilwoman Kathy Miller will lead a group knocking on doors in Stockton neighborhoods seeking support, and on Friday she, City Manager Bob Deis and Councilman Michael Tubbs met with The Record's editorial board to make their case.

The tax increase - if passed with a majority of 50 percent plus one vote - is expected to raise another $28 million in its first full year to help Stockton bolster its crime fight and pay the city's way out of bankruptcy.

The measure has drawn foes from former state Assemblyman Dean Andal and San Joaquin County Taxpayers Association President David Renison, among others.

In response, Stockton leaders embarked on educating the public and trying to win their trust. Expect to see fliers from the measure's backers and plenty of "boots on the ground," Miller said.

"It's about making Stockton safer, about restoring our services, about getting out of bankruptcy and holding future councils accountable," she said.

The ballot measure, expected to arrive at the homes of mail-in voters around Oct. 20, will come in two companion pieces.

Measure A will ask voters to raise their sales taxes to 9 percent. Measure B, a non-binding advisory, will send a message to voters that city leaders promise to dedicate 65 percent of the new money to Stockton's Marshall Plan on Crime and 35 percent to paying bankruptcy debts.

Deis said that even with drastic cuts to police, fire and other city services on top of hardball bankruptcy negotiations, he expects an $11 million deficit in revenue coming out of Chapter 9 protection.

"In order to exit bankruptcy, we need to show that bankruptcy court that Stockton is doing everything in our powers to help ourselves," Deis said. "We cannot do that without more revenues."

And if the tax increase fails at the polls?

"Where are we going to come up with $11 million?" asked Deis, adding that more libraries would close and parks and recreational programs would decrease just to maintain minimal police services.

"That's going to be brutal," he said.

Tubbs, who took office on the City Council in January, represents the new face of Stockton's leadership, which he said embraces a high level of transparency and aspires to adopting the best industry practices at City Hall.

"The old Stockton with its lack of accountability, its lack of transparency and oversight didn't deserve $28 million on a crumbling foundation," said Tubbs, confident that times have changed. "We're on the right path."

City officials backing the tax hike have stiff opposition from those who believe the city will be right back in bankruptcy in a few years if it doesn't take on the rising pension costs Stockton pays to the California Public Employees' Retirement System.

Deis said that's not so, and Stockton hired an actuarial who provided numbers that prove it. He is preparing to make those figures public.

City watchdog Gary Malloy isn't convinced. In a recent council meeting, he rattled of his own figures spelling disaster for Stockton. He credited Deis with making progress, but on this point Deis is wrong, Malloy said.

"I don't want to be coming back here in 2021 saying, 'I told you so,' " Malloy told the council.

Andal even took his challenge of the tax hike to court, arguing that the city's ballot language misleads voters into thinking it is a restricted tax, allowing officials to earmark its uses, when it is not.

His court challenge failed because the judge said Andal filed it too late. Andal said in an interview that he won't appeal the ruling, but he maintains that the measure is filled with holes.

Andal also worries that the rising CalPERS costs will gobble up the new tax money, and the city will be robbed of the new police officers promised in the tax campaign. Deis' math doesn't work, Andal said.

"If he doesn't have a good answer for that, it's a pretty substantial lie to voters," Andal said. "He has never had to square that up."

Renison said an anonymous source mailed him a confidential city document from bankruptcy mediation, which also shows the city buried in pension costs in a few short years.

"This internal document does not square with the city's promise to the voters," Renison said, "that the passage of Measure A would result in long-term financial stability."